Competitive Intelligence in Trade and Export
Start date: Jan 1, 2010,
Promoting business and commerce among European Member States is crucial to survive in today’s global economy. China and India are becoming more powerful; in order to stay competitive, it is imperative that EU companies understand Europe as the new ‘local’ where they ought to think ‘global’ even if they have no immediate internationalization goals. Companies, particularly SMEs, often lack the tools to devise effective trade and export strategies and Business Support Centres (BSC) in Europe try to address this issue. But BSC efforts are in dire need of (a) standardization, and (b) innovation so that efficiency and effectiveness are achieved at the EU level. Competitive Intelligence, if adequately approached, can become the paradigm shift that is needed to propel business in Europe in a harmonised fashion. Intelligence has traditionally been associated with security and defence, but has recently proven successful in certain domains. A broad definition of Competitive Intelligence (CI) is the action of gathering, analyzing, and applying information about products, domain constituents, customers, and competitors for the short term and long term planning needs of an organization, using the advantages of the intelligence discipline. But the death of training materials and tools in Competitive Intelligence stands as a major barrier for BSCs and European enterprises. CITEX intends to fill this vocational training gap by proposing to generate (1) CI training methods, (2) CI training materials and (3) ICT-based e-learning tools for BSCs technicians in Trade and Export, to unify, harmonize and standardize existing (although scattered) training experiences so that they are potentially transferable to any BSC in Europe. CITEX pursues to endow BSCs with new assets by training their agents and technicians in Competitive Intelligence. Our goal is to nurture a new professional profile that is presently lacking but critically needed at the EU level.
Get Access to the 1st Network for European Cooperation
Log In